The promise of T-Mobile 4G. Just about that: a promise

This post should have been written two months ago when, of necessity, not having other choice and simply because I like T-Mobile, I decided to purchase the services of T-Mobile broadband. The customer service representative in the store was very helpful and knew her lines, but she did not give me straight answers to whether this wireless broadband service was in fact 4G-capable, that is, fourth generation wireless. Not at the moment of signing a 2-year contract and not a month later when I brought up, once again, the issue of slowness and not being able to watch YouTube videos and video news clips without a hiccup. Even with the best broadband modem or "laptop stick", in their parlance, the T-Mobile® Rocket 2.0 4G Laptop Stick, I get ridiculous download speeds, how about 6 kilobytes or maximum 30 kilobytes per second? (!), and that's in Manhattan, not in the middle of nowhere,  not to mention that watching an online video is frankly frustrating because the signal keeps "buffering" (20%...30%...). This post was motivated by reading an article at ZDNet where the authors state that "T-Mobile is actually fourth among the big four in the US when it comes to maximum network speeds, and explain how T-Mobile and AT & T "conjured 4G networks out of thin air." There, they have an explanation for what I perceived from the very beginning. Oh, and if you go to a store of T-Mobile or AT&T and even Verizon, they invariably, and by coincidence (?) don't have a live demo of the 4G capabilities, go figure. The answer, however, is pretty simple: they don't have much to show for it. Period. Not in my experience.

How to finally figure out .NET technologies and start something

Let this be one of the New Year's resolutions: to finally master the Microsoft .NET Framework, which is undoubtedly, and this is true at the beginning of 2011, among the best technologies in the Internet world to create and maintain not only top quality Websites but also applications for devices, including the newest and cool Windows Phone 7, web services and more. I find in this book, Professional ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB, a good antidote to counteract the overwhelming amount of documentation available to learn and study these technologies. This book, of course not for beginners, offers a big-picture view of ASP.NET 4 with an excellent editorial layout covering the essential subjects and concepts with a wealth of examples. This is now one of my favorite reference books.

New York in 2011, back to the 1980's? Authorities off the map?

This is an MTA bus stranded in the middle of an important Queens street (not a "tertiary" street) for two days during the recent snow blizzard. It was "abandoned" there, like hundreds of other public buses in the city, some time on Monday 27 December 2010 and removed from the street only on Wednesday 29, time enough for graffiti vandals to stamp their signature... this could only happen in New York, a city I heard more than once  being called the World Capital of the Third World... But we still love this little town blues... Happy New Year!